"Full merge of 1.5 generics work. Bootstrappable with OpenJDK javac compiler. URLConnection timeout support. TimeZone can use platform zoneinfo file when available. The Collection classes, lang.management and util.spi have been updated to 1.6. Addition of 1.6 ServiceLoader. Speedup for cairo and freetype Graphics2D support. The ASM library is now included. Better detection of browser plugin mechanisms for gcjwebplugin applet support in mozilla, iceweasel and firefox." See also the full announcement and some nice screenshots.

This is good, considering that at the moment all the Free JVMs can only work with Classpath and not with Sun's library.

A common complaint with Sun's JVM is the slow start-up time. I recommend trying JamVM/Classpath. It starts up very quickly and runs well. I'm not sure if you can use it to run applets in a Web browser yet, but it could be *the* solution.